


Wide Open Blue

by ProwlingThunder



Series: The Everlasting List of Shenanigans [167]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Bonding, Cloud Watching, Even Synths of himself, Gen, Gen3 Synths, Relaxation and Recovery, Sil always wanted a brother, Silas adopts Synths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 19:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7373845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt!Fic.</p><p>Sometimes, Silas needs some R&R. Real life doesn't always agree.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wide Open Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EgoDominusTuus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EgoDominusTuus/gifts).



> Read the prompt [here](https://prowlingthunder.wordpress.com/2016/07/03/weekly-writing-prompt-response-626-72/).

The day was especially warm for a Commonwealth winter, but the sky was open and blue, with drifting wisps of clouds to break it up. Preston had told him once that he used to lay outside as a boy and watch the clouds drift by, try to guess what shapes they made, and Silas could see the appeal in it even now. If Preston didn't have night watch, if Silas hadn't climbed the hill to lay out on the steel elevator to Vault 111 and suck some heat, he would have invited the man out to join him.

But all of that, coupled with his desire to be alone, stayed his tongue. Preston was unconscious right now anyway. It wouldn't have been fair to wake him up just to come watch the clouds.

He knew what clouds were, of course, intellectually. Condensing water vapor, driven by high winds, Maybe they had been lakes or rivers, or oceans-- this was Massachusetts, after all, couldn't leave that option out. Maybe they had started thick enough to present as fog before they rose into the air. Fog was a hazard in war sometimes, sometimes a help. Depended on all sorts of things.

He hadn't seen fog in the Commonwealth yet, not exactly. He wasn't sure low-riding radiation storms counted. One day the earth would cleanse itself, he figured, but that was a thing he wasn't going to hold his breath for. Some places probably already  _ had, _ but in the Commonwealth, at least, too many people toted mini-nukes and applied them liberally to threats. Marie Curie had the most expensive notes on radiation. Silas was pretty sure those probably hadn't survived into the post-apocalyptic wasteland. Maybe though. Some things had.

One of those things that had was laying next to him, crooning out a sweet tune. The Diamond City radio bounced all the way out to Sanctuary, and although the host was skittish, trying to find his footing, he kept time well and played damned good records.

The song faded out, only to be replaced with the news and the weather in turn. He waited until the next song came on before he forced himself to sit upright, his skin pinked by the sun, hot and dry and stretched over bones too young to belong to the life he'd lived.

War aged people quickly. It didn't make the chronological age any different. Though two hundred and forty is still about two extra lifetimes tacked on top of his own. Maybe Vault-Tec had made it happen, and the Institute hadn't exactly helped, but aside from one salesman, Vault-Tec was gone. The Institute was not.

At least Silas had time to decide what to do with it. Seeing Shaun there, younger and older both, had been.. hard on him. And it had been harder still, when Shaun wanted to wound him so and Silas couldn't, wouldn't, back his son's plays. His ideas were great from a tactical standpoint, but that was it. He valued technology more than people, and he didn't even value technology that high. Maybe less, considering a lot of his technology was people.

Silas would have probably felt better about the whole thing if Shaun treated his people like they were actually people. He didn't, unfortunately, which was part of the reason a lot of his people lived in Sanctuary, despite the protests of Preston's Quincy associates. Synthetic people were still people. Robots with complex thought processes, capable of making choices based on morality, were people. Occasionally some super mutants were people. Ghouls who hadn't gone off the deep end were people.

People were people. And his people were being awfully considerate, leaving him up here on this hill by himself for.. however long he had been up here. He strapped his Pipboy back on, found his hat, and hauled himself to his feet to begin the trek back down the hill. It was hardly large enough to be called a hill, in his opinion, but some people had never seen bigger ones and called it a mountain. He wished he could explain to them the difference.

He had to stop and stare when he hit the bottom of it, because there on the old little foot bridge was a young man with his dark hair and fair skin, same bright blue eyes and an absolute  _ road map _ of scars. A perfect imitation, meant for infiltration.

Y7-09's shoulders were set at angles and his lips were twisted into a scowl, however, and that would have fooled nobody in Sanctuary even if they had really been the same person. It had taken Silas the better part of six months to get that concept through Y7's brain, though. He didn't know if it was in his own nature to be so stubborn, but clearly his synth body-double had it.

"Y7?" They were still working on names. Calling him Y7 was hard for Silas to do-- numbers were not  _ names-- _ but Y7 hadn't found one that he liked besides Silas' own. There could not be  _ two _ Silas Kings, though. "You alright?"

"Your dogs ate my boots," Y7's frown deepened. Silas slid his gaze down to Y7's bare feet and tried not to grimace. Sanctuary's canine population was  _ aware _ that Y7 was not Silas, even though he looked and sounded like him, walked like him. They did not  _ like _ him, though. "And that brunette is doing that thing again."

"I told you, Curie likes you."

"She likes  _ you," _ Y7 protested. "She doesn't--"

"Please give Curie more credit than that. She's a scientist."

"She's a robot inhabiting a synth. The Institute will bring her back in for repurposing."

"They can try," Silas disagreed, stepping around Y7 to lead him back to the settlement. "Come on. Let's go get you a new pair of boots."

"They'll just eat them again," Y7 groused. But there wasn't much heat in it anymore, Silas decided, and that just made the day better. He resolved to ask Y7 out to watch the clouds with him tomorrow.

 


End file.
